Free Republic

A federal judge ordered immigration officials to release the president of Wisconsin's largest mosque from detention Thursday, finding that Salah Sarsour has raised a "substantial" claim that he was being targeted for speaking out in favor of Palestinian rights. Sarsour, a Palestinian-born legal permanent resident of the United States, was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on March 30. The government has claimed he is a foreign policy threat, but Sarsour's attorneys say he was actually targeted for speaking out against Israel. U.S. District Judge James Patrick Hanlon wrote in a decision Thursday that attorneys for...

Friday, August 27, 2004 A captured al-Qaeda operative has told Canadian intelligence investigators that a Montreal man who trained in Afghanistan alongside the 9/11 hijackers was responsible for the crash of an American Airlines flight in New York three years ago. Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents were told during five days of interviews with the source that Abderraouf Jdey, a Canadian citizen also known as Farouk the Tunisian, had downed the plane with explosives on Nov. 12, 2001. The source claimed Jdey had used his Canadian passport to board Flight 587 and "conducted a suicide mission" with a small bomb...

The death of Apple Daily marks the end of Hong Kong's free press, and the west must ask: is it wise to continue empowering the CCP's destruction of values we cherish?The Chinese Communist Party and pro-Beijing Hong Kong authorities forced Apple Daily, the last pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong, to cease operation this week. The death of Apple Daily marks the end of a free press in Hong Kong, once one of the freest places on the planet.Founded By a Refugee of CommunismThe newspaper was founded 26 years ago by outspoken Hong Kong tycoon Jimmy Lai. Born in mainland China,...

Two weeks ago, Freedom Center Investigates ran a blockbuster story exposing the troubling background of Adam Hamawy. a New Jersey congressional candidate, who had testified at the Blind Sheikh’s trial. In 1995, ‘Adam’ Hisham Hamawy testified for the defense in the trial of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman: the Egyptian Islamic terror leader linked to the World Trade Center bombing. Now, Hamawy is running for Congress in New Jersey while promising to defund the military, abolish ICE, and dismantle the Department of Homeland Security. The Sheikh’s supporters carried out terrorist attacks across Egypt. Others were responsible for the World Trade Center...

Patient Zero in the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak has been identified as ornithologist Leo Schilperoord, whose passion for birds may have cost him his life. The 70-year-old man and his wife, Mirjam Schilperoord, 69, were on a five-month trip to South America. They first landed in Argentina on Nov. 27, and traveling through Chile, Uruguay and then back to Argentina in late March, where they went on a fateful birdwatching adventure. The couple — from Haulerwijk, a small village of 3,000 people in the Netherlands — were identified in obituaries published in their monthly village magazine. They co-authored a study...

Republican South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace named several lawmakers Monday who she claims used a congressional “slush fund” to cover up alleged sex scandals. Mace said she uncovered 1,000 pages of documents detailing how certain lawmakers allegedly evaded consequences for sexual scandals, according to a Monday post on X. Mace originally subpoenaed the House Oversight Committee in March in light of a string of sexual scandals that resulted in two resignations from Congress. (RELATED: REPORT: Two GOP Lawmakers Go Head-To-Head In Push To Expel One Another) Notably, Mace said that these documents are only from the last 22 years, claiming...

In today’s world, there are 193 countries in the UN. The large majority of those countries will vote consistently against the United States on measures that come before the General Assembly. Then again, the international system that counts is not the UN, but rather the U.S.-led commercial and legal order of alliances and trade. Almost all of the 193 UN member countries participate willingly in that system, to their great benefit. They may oppose the U.S. on many issues, and they may have disputes with their immediate neighbors, but they don’t make themselves constant troublemakers threatening to disrupt world peace...

In 1995, ‘Adam’ Hisham Hamawy testified for the defense in the trial of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman: the Egyptian Islamic terror leader linked to the World Trade Center bombing. Now, Hamawy is running for Congress in New Jersey while promising to defund the military, abolish ICE, and dismantle the Department of Homeland Security. Hamawy, an Egyptian Muslim currently working as a plastic surgeon in New Jersey, has been in the news more recently for his Gaza advocacy, demanding that Israel stop its military campaign against Hamas, and in his recent interview with Hasan Piker, a Turkish social media influencer who...

<p>LONDON -- The diary of a former personal secretary to Osama bin Laden reveals that al Qaeda may have been using a popular blue gemstone to help finance its operations as early as 1995.</p> <p>The day planner of Wadih el Hage, who was convicted last year of conspiracy in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, provides the strongest documentary evidence to date of al Qaeda's involvement in the tanzanite trade.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department inspector general is investigating whether FBI agents involved in espionage and terrorism cases improperly used informants and subjects of investigation to benefit private businesses they were running on the side, according to officials and documents. The allegations, according to court documents reviewed by The Associated Press, include that agents' and intelligence assets' private companies were involved in business deals in China and the Middle East about the same time the FBI was investigating Chinese efforts to acquire sensitive technology. The FBI says it is cooperating with the investigation. "Any time there is a request...

Was the 9/11 Commission Report a cover up? Were we lied to when we were told that 9/11 was the first time that Al-Qaeda hijacked and destroyed an American jetliner? Five time Emmy® award-winning investigative journalist Journalist Peter Lance and bestselling author Peter Lance asserts just that in his blockbuster new book Cover Up: What the Government is Still Hiding About the War on Terror (HarperCollins). In his 2003 bestselling nonfiction work, 1000 Years for Revenge (HarperCollins), Lance laid bare the plotting and events that led to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. After reading 1000 Years for Revenge, Governor...

Hillary Clinton has been appointed as the new chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast, the college announced on Thursday. The former US first lady, secretary of state and senator, who has been a regular visitor to Northern Ireland going back to the first visit of President Bill Clinton in 1995, becomes the university’s first female chancellor. Ms Clinton, who failed in her bid to be elected US president, holds an honorary doctorate from Queen’s. She will serve as chancellor for a five-year term.

A terrorist from Jordan briefly worked as an Obamacare navigator in Illinois while authorities remained unaware of her conviction for involvement in a deadly grocery store bombing and two other attacks. Rasmieh Yousef Odeh was convicted in Israel for her role in several bombings, including the 1969 attack on an upscale Shufersol grocery store, which killed two Hebrew University students who had stopped in to buy groceries for a hiking trip in the Jerusalem hills. Leon Kanner and Eddie Joffe were killed by a bomb hidden in a candy box tucked on a shelf, which also injured nine or 10...

It's not every day that an American labor union gets investigated for possible ties to two of the world's most lethal terrorist organizations. But Chicago's Service Employees International Union Local 73 isn't an everyday union. Last September 24, FBI agents raided residences in Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan of more than a dozen radical activists in an effort to connect them to the Hamas (Gaza and the West Bank) and FARC (Colombia) guerrilla movements. Two of the occupants were SEIU Local 73 chief steward and executive board member Joe Iosbaker and former local board member-steward Tom Burke. Neither they nor anyone else has...

Oct 27, 2005 Russia has quietly worked to forge a quasi-alliance of that to rival the US-led NATO, between current and future nuclear powers of Pakistan, China and Iran. This alignment is specifically geared toward confronting the US in a hotly contested market for geopolitical status in the middle east and to dictate economic trends concerning natural resources in the region. Decision by the IAEA to refer Iran to the UN Security Council has also put Russia in a difficult position between choosing its long-term economic ties with the EU and US or short-term ones with Iran. As the world...

Sant Chatwal courts controversy for helping Hillary By Arun Kumar, Washington, Sep 3 : Indian American businessman Sant Chatwal helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Hillary Clinton's campaigns even as he battled to escape bankruptcy and millions of dollars in tax liens, the Washington Post alleged Monday. The founder of the Bombay Palace restaurant chain, Chatwal is one of a growing number of fundraisers in the 2008 presidential campaign whose backgrounds have prompted questions about how much screening the candidates devote to their "bundlers" while they press to raise record amounts, the daily said. Chatwal's case reached from...

The gunman who killed two students at Brown University was found dead in a storage unit after murdering an MIT professor as their decades-old connection was revealed. The suspect - 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente - was revealed to be a Portuguese national who studied at the Ivy League school in Rhode Island more than 20 years ago. He had attended Brown to pursue a masters of science in physics from 2000 to 2001, before he took a leave of absence and ultimately withdrew from the school. It remains unclear why Neves Valente opened fire at the Rhode Island school, killing...

A burgeoning East Boston-based street gang made up of alleged rapists and machete-wielding robbers has been linked to the al-Qaeda terrorist network, prompting Boston police to ``turn up the heat'' on its members, the Herald has learned. MS-13, which stands for La Mara Salvatrucha, is an extremely violent organization with roots in El Salvador, and boasts more than 100 ``hardcore members'' in East Boston who are suspected of brutal machete attacks, rapes and home invasions. There are hundreds more MS-13 gangsters in towns along the North Shore, said Boston police Sgt. Detective Joseph Fiandaca, who has investigated the gang since...

Could We Have Prevented the Attacks? by William Norman Grigg During the 1990s, the FBI uncovered clues indicating that bin Laden was planning to attack America with hijacked airliners. This information was never shared with local police. On April 19th, police arrested 30-year-old Leo V. Felton and 21-year-old Erica Chase after they had tried to pass counterfeit $20 bills at a Dunkin’ Donuts in East Boston. After the pair was booked and processed into the Nashua Street Jail, police turned the investigation over to the Secret Service. Seven days later, Felton was free on bail, despite the fact that federal ...

Justin Raimondo: An American Neo-Fascist By Stephen Schwartz FrontPageMagazine.com | March 15, 2005 Dennis “Justin” Raimondo is a minor celebrity in the U.S., thanks to a 10-year career as an amateur demagogue in the libertarian milieu of the San Francisco Bay Area, a political environment where anything goes and nothing matters. He has the familiar personality traits of the type: “sentimental formlessness, absence of disciplined thought, ignorance combined with gaudy erudition.”  He poses as a conservative but maintains a website at antiwar.com, that features anti-American cranks like Noam Chomsky and is hugely popular with the left – not surprisingly since it...